Posts Tagged iPhone

Those who know me know I quite like my iPhone. I’m not a huge Apple fanboy, I have absolutely no desire to own a Mac, and though I occasionally feel a brief flash of desire for an iPad, after a minute or two sanity returns and I realise that I have no use for a tablet of any kind and that I can’t do anything on one that I can’t do on either my phone or my laptop. When @helenelectric first bought her first iPhone 3G I scoffed at the expense, but that iPhone proved to be absurdly useful. These days we both have an iPhone 4 and will probably save up our pennies for an iPhone 5 next year. Of course, other smart phones are available and I have no doubt some of them are very good but I’m damned if I’ve gone through all that faff with iTunes just to have to learn how you use a new kind of phone. Plus I don’t want to have to buy all my apps again.

And it’s an app I want to talk about today. Specifically a game by the name of Galaxy on Fire 2. It’s a space based shooter/trader/RPG in the vein on Frelancer or Elite. It’s one of the more expensive iPhone Games (£6.99) but for that price I got a couple of weeks of solid entertainment, alternating pursuing the main plot fighting a sinister alien attacker and pursuing remunerative mercenary work in order to afford a variety of shiny new ships and upgrades to those ships.

In honesty, iPhone games have used up a lot of time I could have spent reading improving books – or to be even more honest, gaming rules or sci-fi paperbacks. But these games have provided a blessed distraction from the antics of the chavy teenagers on my morning bus commute.

My current ship - the Ward assault fighter

The fact that you can get this kind of game on a tiny device that is also a phone, camera, wireless internet device, navigational tool etc etc is undeniably cool.

I really enjoyed playing this game, once I got the hang of controlling my ship with the virtual joystick. The plot itself is a bit on the thin side but the sandbox aspects are a lot of fun and you can choose to earn your living as a hired gun, a tour operator, a courier, a miner or any combination of these.

'Betty' your starting ship.

It’s quite satisfying to go from a rickety old crate and slowly improve to a state of the art mutirole craft with all the bells and whistles. It’s also great fun each time to install a new upgrade or buy a new ship to immediately take it out an hunt down some pirate scum (even better when you can find someone who will pay you to do so).

Not a game for everyone of course but if it sounds like your thing I heartily recommend it.